Next month in Los Angeles, the Museum of Contemporary Art will present Art in the Streets, the first major US museum show to examine street art and graffiti in the context of contemporary art history, and by all accounts, a bit of a coming out party for new museum director Jeffery Deitch. The exhibition will showcase installations by 50 artists, including Swoon, Shepard Fairey, Os Gemeos, and JR, and will reunite Steve Powers, Todd James, and Barry McGee for a new iteration of their legendary Street Market show. There will also be a custom skate ramp in the museum designed by pro-skater Lance Mountain and artist Geoff McFetridge, with live demonstrations by the Nike SB skate team. While the show doesn’t officially open until April 17th, in the meantime you can click through to preview a few images. And New Yorkers, take solace: Art in the Streets moves to the Brooklyn Museum next March.
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Italian artist Laurina Paperina has been killing her idols for the last four years in a series of drawings titled How to Kill the Artists. Banksy’s rat takes a hit out on him, Bjork drives a chainsaw into Matthew Barney, and Marina Abramovic runs into her lover one too many times. But Paperina, whose real name Laura Scottini, slays her art world heroes more as an homage than anything malicious, and with each crime scene comes a witty nod to art history. Holed up in her bedroom in the small Italian town of Mori, Paperina infuses her clever videos, paintings, installations and illustrations with pop culture references, political commentary, and American humor culled from the internet. We caught up with her for a brief Q&A and a sampling of her best art murders after the jump.
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Yesterday we reported on Theodora Richards’ brush with the law, an incident in which she was apprehended for writing graffiti. Historically the medium has been male dominated, so in appreciation of Richards’ efforts, we compiled a list of her predecessors — our ten favorite female graffiti artists from around the world. Though it’s doubtful tagging “TNA” (which she was arrested for) will ever earn her a spot on this list, it’s nice to know she’s trying, even if those attempts end with a court date. Check out our ten favorite female graffiti writers after the jump.
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Video-rich website The Creative Lives documents the work, experiences, and observations of the people behind the contemporary art of a generation.
Each Monday, the site unveils a feature on a new artist, some of whom double as art dealers and curators. There’s always a short film, supplemented by Super 8 outtakes, press clippings, exhibition views, the artists’ websites, and more. Like a tech-savvy update on Vasari’s 16th-century biographical tract Lives of the Artists, this material comes straight from the source.
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Since the early ’90s we’ve seen the emergence of what some have been calling “outsider” and “urban” art — artists who used the street as their canvas and non-traditional mediums as their tools, but weren’t practicing what we’d normally title graffiti. On April 25th the work of many of these artists (including Shepard Fairey, Barry McGee, KAWS, Mike Giant, FAILE, Banksy, Neck Face, and many more) will be featured at Phillips De Pury auction house in their Saturday@Phillips series. We caught up with Ken Miller (auction art consultant, ex-editor in chief of Tokion Magazine, and publisher of Revisionaries: A Decade of Art in Tokion) and Alex Smith (auction curator and Contemporary and Urban Art Specialist at Phillips de Pury & Co.) so we can get an insider’s point of view on the rise and relevance of this movement. Read More »
